No video in Windows after mobo/cpu/video upgrade

ROMAD · Dec 8, 2005

Here's a quick run down:

Before
A-XP mobile 2600+
Epox 8RDA6+ Pro
6800NU 128MB (AGP)
2GB of OCZ Platinum

After
Opteron 175
Epox 9NPA+ Ultra
7800GT (PCI-E)
2GB of OCZ Platinum

Just installed everything last night. Everything booted up fine right away (no overclocking yet). I was able to ghost the drive before the upgrade, so I have an image of my PC as it was right before the upgrade. However, after I did that and upon trying to boot into Windows XP Pro (SP2), the video blanks out and does not come back. If I reboot, I can get video and get into the BIOS, etc., but it will not show video in Windows. The funny part is, I can see Windows loading up and can tell it's not just hung. The drive light comes on for an extended period during normal boot up, and then goes into a once in a while mode once the boot up completes. I can even reboot the PC with CTRL-ALT-DEL, Shift-S, R, ENTER (try it, and you'll see what that does). So it appears everything is functioning correctly, except I'm not getting video.

I have a hunch of what the problem is, so I'm really just looking for some confirmation. The PC that I'm upgrading from was AGP and obviously the new one is PCI-E, so I believe the problem lies in the fact that I cannot load the PCI-E drivers necessary. That being the case, Windows doesn't know what to do with the video.

I will be picking up a PCI video card later today to try tonight, but I wanted to know if anyone has any other ideas about getting video after the upgrade. Hopefully, if I get video from the PCI card, I will be able to complete the Windows installation and install the nForce drivers. Once that's done, I'll try the 7800GT again.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Avg · Dec 8, 2005

it's all cased by driver conflict, when replacing the mobo or video card you should expect to have to do a fresh install to be able to get all the performance from the hardware, and when getting a new mobo I know for a fact that going from nF2 to NF4 won't work because I tried it, it didn't even boot into safe mode, and the reason I think was that it was loading the default windows agp driver as you mentioned. So what I did was to put my hdd on my nf2 pc mode the stuff I needed to a partition I had on that driver and did a fresh install.

hibner · Dec 8, 2005

The ghost image that you used contains drivers and windows settings for your previous motherboard and vid card. Try to install the new drivers for your board and card. That might do it, but I am pretty sure you will need to do a fresh install of windows. That is standard proceedure after a mobo replacement.

nice setup btw

ROMAD · Dec 8, 2005

Yep, that's what I figured. The one issue I did have was I upgraded the PSU first. Went from a Fortron 500W to the OCZ PowerStream 520W. When I did this, the PC (still A-XP mobile at the time) would not boot. I was getting post code "6D" on the mobo. This later turned out to be something stupid (CD-ROM data cable hooked up, but no power). At the time though, I figured I wouldn't mess with troubleshooting the old hardware, I would just jump right in and install the new. The only smart thing I did do was Ghost the drive prior to this. I can fall back to my old system/install in about 10-15 minutes, but I was looking for any tips on getting the new system running as-is.

Most likely, I will try going back to the old system, removing all drivers for nForce and then Sysprep the thing. I use Sysprep here at work for everything and it migrates across platforms very neatly. I just couldn't do it last night because of the stupidity that ensued after I installed the PSU.

Still, any other tips/tricks are welcome.

K15 · Dec 9, 2005

ROMAD said:
Here's a quick run down:

Before
A-XP mobile 2600+
Epox 8RDA6+ Pro
6800NU 128MB (AGP)
2GB of OCZ Platinum

After
Opteron 175
Epox 9NPA+ Ultra
7800GT (PCI-E)
2GB of OCZ Platinum

Just installed everything last night. Everything booted up fine right away (no overclocking yet). I was able to ghost the drive before the upgrade, so I have an image of my PC as it was right before the upgrade. However, after I did that and upon trying to boot into Windows XP Pro (SP2), the video blanks out and does not come back. If I reboot, I can get video and get into the BIOS, etc., but it will not show video in Windows. The funny part is, I can see Windows loading up and can tell it's not just hung. The drive light comes on for an extended period during normal boot up, and then goes into a once in a while mode once the boot up completes. I can even reboot the PC with CTRL-ALT-DEL, Shift-S, R, ENTER (try it, and you'll see what that does). So it appears everything is functioning correctly, except I'm not getting video.

I have a hunch of what the problem is, so I'm really just looking for some confirmation. The PC that I'm upgrading from was AGP and obviously the new one is PCI-E, so I believe the problem lies in the fact that I cannot load the PCI-E drivers necessary. That being the case, Windows doesn't know what to do with the video.

I will be picking up a PCI video card later today to try tonight, but I wanted to know if anyone has any other ideas about getting video after the upgrade. Hopefully, if I get video from the PCI card, I will be able to complete the Windows installation and install the nForce drivers. Once that's done, I'll try the 7800GT again.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Go to safe mode (video will/should work) and delete the old AGP video driver from device manager, reboot into normal mode and see. It should see your new card and install. If not, it may be more problems (motherboard driver problems)
I'm guessing you know safe mode, F8 while booting.

ROMAD · Dec 14, 2005

Got everything up and running. Fresh install of XP. Ran into a BSOD problem that was fixed by disabling DEP. Anyway, everything is running good, doing some burn-in now. See sig. for latest overclock. Right now, running good at 2.64GHz. I'm new to A64/Opteron overclocking so I'm still feeling it out.

No video in Windows after mobo/cpu/video upgrade

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